SpringSoft, Inc. and Source III, Inc. have announced the availability of Source III’s new DFTView™ tool and its integration with SpringSoft’s Verdi™ Automated Debug System. Using the products together, DFT and test Engineers are able to graphically view and debug the contents of industry standard test files in the WGL and STIL formats. This integration not only expands the power of Verdi but also makes it available to a wider set of users.

STIL (Standard Test Interface Language – IEEE 1450.1999) and WGL (Waveform Generation Language) are industry standard languages used by Automatic Test Program Generators (ATPG) and Design for Test (DFT) tools to specify test patterns for IC devices. These languages use complex, high-level language syntax to describe the waveforms which ultimately are applied to an IC device on Automatic Test Equipment (ATE). It is difficult for DFT and Test engineers to inspect and validate these files before using them on a tester. DFTView is the industry’s first generic tool that gives engineers the ability to graphically see the actual waveforms defined by these intermediate test languages.

“The integration between our Verdi solution and Source III’s DFTView is a natural progression for us. Engineering teams can now take advantage of the visualization power of Verdi to understand the intended behavior of test files,” said Thomas Li, director of product marketing at SpringSoft.

In addition to graphically displaying the STIL or WGL files, DFTView checks the syntax of these files and generates error messages when the files contain errors. This is particularly helpful if the files have been hand-edited or contain manually generated sections. A correspondence between the vector lines in the WGL or STIL source file and waveform positions in the waveform display are maintained by the tool, which allows the user to view specific corresponding locations in each file.